The Pre-Pre-Season

A funny/somewhat absurd situation has developed over the last year: a guy friend and I expressed mutual admiration, and then continued seasonal migrations to our respective opposite corners of Alaska.  It's almost as though the earth's wobble would be offset were we both to inhabit the arctic at the same time.  At least we managed a week with friends and fine food before trading places in Coldfoot.

In addition to tending that nascent flame, I warmed up a bit to big city life in Anchorage.  Now, Anchorage is dumpy -- lack of urban planning, seedy "frontier" type bars, and the sort of strip malls that feature a worn-out Italian-Mexican restaurant, pawn shop, and weed store all coalesce into a rather bleak aesthetic.  But sprinkled throughout the drabness one can find excellent ramen and pho, functional and scenic bike paths, and independent bookstores.  And at 300,000 people, it's still small enough that most everyone is decently nice.

It's been a late, cold spring in southern Alaska, but slowly things are coming life.  Leaves popped out a couple days ago.  Snow is melting swiftly up the mountainsides, making for squishy hiking and daily increased river and lake levels.  My first flowers sighted were roadside dandelions, and wild chives should add purple to the landscape soon.

Coworker Luke and I managed to be in the Mayberry-like town of Hope for its spring awakening.  Mid-May is the unofficial start of tourist season, and we watched as summer residents, weekenders, and seasonal workers trickled into town.  Restaurants opened after being shuttered for winter, and we warmed up with beers and dancing to local bluegrass as the evening sky refused to grow dim.

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That felt like a good ending place, but I also want to talk about getting out to the backcountry lodge.  Skilak Lake stayed frozen over through the first week of May, so after our days of all-staff training HR lectures and group leaf-raking/bonding at the main lodge, we came out to open up our place.  WE GOT A NEW STOVE!  It gets hot AND the door stays shut!  And new cabinets that I got to paint!  And lots of new staff who seem mostly cool.  Cool enough to dance our butts off sober to stale, trashy club music, then joyfully raft five hours down the frigid river the morning after.  

Kevin boldly pursuing cottonwood buds 

best camping spot, Turnagain Arm

the view from Slaughter Ridge

lounging otter, Homer

rafting picnic lunch with the crew

Arctic Work-cation

The post-it with tiny squares on my desk shows one week until I leave Coldfoot.  It's a difficult science to try to map out the "right" length of time for most anything -- do we really transform into adults at 18?  Do we learn all the foundations of chemistry in two semesters?  Is our playing complete at the end of recess?  Does sleep come when darkness blankets the land?  I find a great deal to do and enjoy here, and a happy month is a gift.  Always better to leave wanting to come back...

I'm glad to have witnessed the changing of the guard here, and be assured of some continuities.  Even though the staff almost entirely turned over, we still have a nice manic guy who smokes too much weed and cooks fun side projects; a relentlessly positive middle-aged cleaning lady; an underachieving night cook who blasts music incongruous to a truck stop diner; unqualified heavy machinery operators; and a hermity outdoorsman who suffers our bohemian group dynamics to share salvaged caribou roadkill.

It's just about the slowest time of year.  No hunters, no construction crews.  Daylight burns so long the sky is too bright for stars, and the aurora (the source of most winter tourism) has all but bled away into transparency.  It's still wintery cold, but out of the wind the heat of the sun is life-giving.  Outside of moseying around to construct the occasional bacon and egg sandwich and form logs of ground beef into burger patties, I've skied or snowshoed almost every day.  All that bracing fresh air stirs within me a primal urge to consume breakfast sausage and giant cookies.  Luckily, the beast in my stomach is also placated by Jared's handmade ravioli, and our meager supply of kale is stretching to last through my duration.

I made sure to check out the skies when I first arrived

Apparently I scared a bird

Short ride up the road

Luke transports bags across a frozen river after a group of us hauled lumber to rebuild a cabin

Tough trail breaking, great views

Snow blanket

Back Around

My hands are currently coated in olive oil, as I was distracted when packing and neglected to grab lotion.  The resumption of kitchen work is harsh on the skin.  I'm also writing with a suboptimal pen, and attempting to stay awake to reset the diurnal clock to my weird polar truck stop schedule.  So here's an incomplete list of late winter happenings:

- many nice dinners with mom and dad, promptly at 5pm

- every appointment ever for the whole year, crammed into a month (teeth/hair/banking/insurance accomplished)

- 4-hour dual-layer sweater-sleeve patch-sewing project

- Bumble match and date with city commissioner 

- stacked logs at future Pixley homestead; baby and toddler music class with all the Pixley gals; palm and tarot reading by (sha-mistress?) Jana

- consumed a generous wedge of soft cheese and KT's creamy-sundried-tomato Marry Me Chicken (would that she were single...)

- traditional Saint Paddy's negroni in boisterous good company at the Top of the Park, the weathered but classic bar atop our historic downtown hotel

- and to mark my circumnavigation of the globe, a wonderful, indulgent weekend in Anchorage, wherein I celebrated my return to Alaska all too well and earned a punishing hangover; thus bringing us full circle to repacking to go north to Coldfoot and forgetting hand lotion.

Happy Spring!

frozen/melty algae

the snow came and went and the sun won out

our most flattering picture yet

The Last Bit

"One foot up and one foot down/That's the way to London Town."  I had a very nice few days visiting my friend's family in London, finally meeting toddler Anselm, no longer a baby but walking and talking and loving being silly.  Audrey and I enjoyed some decadent pub lunches, outstanding choral music, and the best filter coffee ever.  In this bizarre warm-and-cold winter, crocuses were already up, and a variety of goslings and ducklings skimmed frenetically across park ponds.

And then to cap off this long journey I stopped in New York and met up with my ex-husband.  Doing such a thing isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I was glad (and, well, somber) to once again see in person the face I smiled at daily for thirteen years.  It relieved somewhat the feeling of being a ghost, checking on the places I lived and worked and sought fun and refuge in hostile and promising Manhattan.  My private sense of unreality compounded with the post-covid depopulation and unnatural quiet that has befallen the city -- the hustle and bustle is decidedly diminished.

But some things stay the same.  Visiting lovely friends in a small park inundated by recess-berserk teenagers felt more like it.  And three successive souvenir vendors on the Brooklyn Bridge blasting Alicia Keys' "New York" on seemingly endless loop; a rent-controlled apartment with 8,000 coats of paint on the clanking steam radiator; a dude at a bougie bakery talking loudly into his phone about flying to LA to produce a play; and me speeding down the block counting how many flashes are left on the crosswalk signal, trying to get wherever I'm going.

the beautiful East River

Midtown rush(?)hour

Courtesy of Audrey

We looked at where all the cool animals live, and read, and played

Spanish Interlude

One of my uncles has led an improbably fantastical life: he speaks with a heavy German accent he acquired as a government-employed member of a biker gang; he lived in a seaside cave on a remote island; he starts each morning with a few chopped raw garlic cloves in his cocoa puffs.  To be fair, his parents (my grandparents) were originals themselves, though more amenable to social norms.  Phil's first big step into, for lack of a better term, an alternative lifestyle, dates to age 16.  To avoid prison after a felony conviction, he served in the army during Vietnam.  I don't know all the details, but he re-enlisted and was recruited for some special projects, which resulted in him riding his motorcycle into the former Yugoslavia, often with alarmingly young girlfriends.

At some point he visited the Canary Islands for R&R.  He met my aunt Maija, a Finnish lab manager, and they decided to live alongside some hippies on the beach in Gomera.  They gradually remodeled a ruined goat shed into an incredibly homey and charming place to live.  For years they've encouraged me to visit, so I finally did.

I'm an avowed lover of winter and snow, but this was subtropical PARADISE!  Black sand beaches, cactus and coconut trees, eponymous canaries, and tons of hiking trails.  Phil and Maija picked me up from the ferry and we drove up along jagged ravines, through rainforest, and back down to the sunny but savage north coast.

Maija is super sharp and fluent in at least five languages, with a sort of Eastern European accent to my ears.  To my delight she calls me "Cly-ray," complimented me on my minimal luggage and being "organitzated," and explained quirks of the plumbing and where to put "shit paper."  She is quite a talker, and wherever we went she chatted up friends and strangers, welcomed hitchhikers, told me the history of families and farms and the numbers of goats and chickens each had, descended into reveries of grape harvests past and saints' day fiestas and journeys over the steep rocky hills with her favorite donkey and her youngest son running over the mountain to get to school...  The river of stories flowed, branching into innumerable side streams, pouring forth ceaselessly with undiminished effluence.

My most notable culinary discovery on Gomera was palm syrup -- similar to molasses, it sweetened my oatmeal and tea, and deliciously caramelized onions with grilled squid.  But the most memorable food was a basic, dry little cookie: we ate quite a few while drinking generous amounts of wine with the neighbors, celebrating Maija's birthday.  We sang a few songs, Maija started to dance and almost jumped on the table; a strong warm wind blew scented with salt from the breakers a thousand feet below.  I grabbed another cookie for my evening walk with the dog up along the village terraces, under a full moon, already planning my next visit.

hundreds of iridescent Portuguese jellyfish washed into the beach 

the kitchen

east beach, downhill from home

switchbacks to Guillama, and Twin Rocks in the distance

Valle Gran Rey

When in Champagne

Back when I was an editor with precious few vacation days, I'd spend weeks researching a destination, trying to distill all available information into a uniquely fun and exploratory trip.  The advent of smart phones and a freer schedule have almost completely obliterated those habits.  So, when I had to kill a few days, I went to Reims merely because I knew it's home to a big ol' cathedral and I found a cheap place to stay.  After a day of canceled and convoluted trains, I looked out from my last bus, curious about the fantastic estates we drove past.  "Huh," I thought, "why are there palaces all around the city?"  

I set out on a rather forlorn winter day the next morning, made grimmer by the closure of most businesses for a nation-wide protest.  Avoiding angry chanting and gunpowder blasts, I wandered to one of those palaces and solved the mystery.  This imposing, walled neo-Gothic manor was the home of Pommery Champagne.  Clad as always in my worn-out hiking clothes, I walked in and toured one of the world's most celebrated wine producers (Veuve Clicquot was closed for renovations).  I descended into ingeniously repurposed limestone quarries, now an aging bottle-crypt transformed by playful modern art.  Back above ground, a very sophisticated and very attractive French man served me some bubbly grape drink.

Of course, my main reason for visiting France was to see Marta.  She somehow manages the logistics of gigs, teaching at three schools, a six-year-old son's school and shared parenting and clarinet lessons and Boy Scouts, a two-year-old daughter's day care and food, and made time to hang out with me and go to the Turkish bath and eat lots of chocolate.  It's easy to love Paris with its beautiful architecture and endless pastries and antique bookstores -- but my affection for the city is also largely due to the half-Polish-mothering/homey-hostess-camaraderie my friend espouses.  

In addition to the more traditional relief mural depicting the harvest on the wall to the right, please enjoy this seal emerging from a dirt pile, this creepy treehouse, and an anime candy tree in the back room

different aging areas are distinguished by various city names

walking the Adrien to school

somehow it took five trains and a bus to go 250 miles

good Reims street vibes

a great English language used bookstore in Paris

can't not have a photo of this guy

Ja, bitte

In certain quarters and company, I'd assume a visit to Berlin would transport one to a world of avant-garde minimalist/nihilist/abstract art and urbanity.  For me, it felt like visiting a friend in college in Boston: lots of 90s clothes, smoking allowed in bars, accented but fluent English speakers, some industrial grit, and a gal pal host finding her way in her newly adopted town.  We even went to a club, well after midnight, which I did approximately one time in college -- and took molly, which I did zero times in college.  (For those of you keeping score, that's yet another drug that had absolutely no effect on me; thanks, I think?, liver.)  It was lovely to see Cleo and talk about Alaska and gossip about Coldfoot coworkers.  

Next, I visited Heidelberg and got to talk with a fellow trekker about Bhutan, which already feels like it was three years ago instead of three months.  The cold gray skies and damp hilly woods surrounding the city reminded me strongly of northern Michigan.  Vineyards stretch along slopes north of the city, and you can walk from tidy, quiet village to tidy, quiet village alongside backyard-cum-garden plots.

A sort of fairytale atmosphere carried on in Ludwigsburg.  The former was an archetypal European city, with old palace, town square with market, good train connections, small university, and blend of old and young families.  I visited a nice couple I met in India, born and bred Swabians who were pleasantly surprised I was familiar with pretzels and spatzle.  Fabian took it upon himself to make sure I ate a wide variety of tasty, weird meat, including bologna studded with pieces of vegetables and nuts; a white veal sausage you painstakingly dislodge from its casing; maultaschen -- pasta stuffed with ground meat, then sautéed; and to finish out the day, Burger King vegetable-protein-chicken.  We had just seen "Hansel and Gretel" at the Stuttgart Opera, so I guess all the talk of sweetmeats made us hungry.

East Side Gallery, Berlin Wall

window nugget

Two ladies from the Arctic 

main street Hirschorn, where I enjoyed "Rick & Morty" with a friend's cousin

most German child that ever existed

outside Heidelberg